


A Recipe For Conflict

by PhantomEngineer



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 11:18:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15387627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhantomEngineer/pseuds/PhantomEngineer
Summary: Molly attempts to cheer Grimmauld Place up by baking. Her attempt to make cute dog shaped sweet breads to lift Sirius out of his state of perpetual misery is foiled by the presence of Severus, who always manages to materialise at the most inopportune moment and make things difficult.





	A Recipe For Conflict

**Author's Note:**

> I happened to see (and eat) a sweet, chocolate-filled bread shaped like a dog due to it being the Year of the Dog. That is the inspiration for this silly scene.

Molly had been trying to cheer up Grimmauld Place by baking. It was a valiant effort, but one ultimately doomed for failure. The building was dreary in general, and full of dark memories. It was also inhabited constantly by Sirius, effectively under house arrest, who had nothing but bad memories associated with his childhood and ancestral home. He had hated it as a child, he had hated it as a teenager. He had left as soon as he could. He still hated it as an adult, and hated being forced to live entrapped within the walls, finding it not entirely dissimilar to the literal prison he had not too long ago escaped from. His presence, as well as the looming threat of Voldemort, made it particularly miserable. It was as if a dark cloud not only hung over the house, but had also started living there, distorting all sense of reason.

No one could really think of anything much to say to cheer Sirius up, and after a few feeble attempts most had given up. If anything, the most passion he displayed was in response to Severus, though that was mostly hatred. It was a more lively hatred than the dull, half-dead hatred he showed to his surroundings, like a black sludge slowly seeping through all the rooms. Molly’s baking could’t override the arguments, the taunts that Severus would send his way as parting quips before heading out to the outside world, leaving Sirius to stew in his own bitter juices.

Molly’s most recent attempt was sweet bread rolls, filled with chocolate sauce under the logic that everyone liked chocolate and that it made people happy. It worked against the Dementors, so maybe it might work against the soul-destroying misery that permeated the entire house. She had made them dog shaped, a feat that show-cased her skills as a baker, mainly because she thought Sirius might like them. It was the sort of thing she might have done to cheer up her children when they were still young, far too young for Hogwarts, so that she was reduced to such measures for a grown man made her despair slightly, but she did it anyway. He was a good person, ultimately, just having a bad phase. She wanted him to feel better, to help chase out his demons.

Unfortunately for her, the first bad tempered man with a whole host of traumatic childhood memories to show up in the kitchen was not Sirius, but Severus. To make matters even worse, Sirius did appear not long afterwards. Sirius she had at least called, because she had wanted him to see her creations. Severus just had that incredible ability to turn up at the worst possible moment. She knew this from hearing literally every single one of her children complain how he would always materialise at the exact moment that made whatever it was they were doing to break the rules looked even worse than it actually was. She had always admonished them for the rule breaking part, but her experience with the Order and Grimmauld Place had made her agree that Severus did tend to appear right at the moments she really wished he wouldn’t.

Both men looked at the tray of dog shaped sweet breads. Severus looked at Sirius, before turning his gaze back to the tray. Molly could feel her insides twisting in fear of what might happen next. Neither were known for their predictability, and what little there might be always disappeared when they were with each other. They rubbed each other the wrong way, so that anything minor would be an overreaction, even for two men who tended to overreact to everything in general. Severus smiled, but it wasn’t a particularly nice smile. It may have in part been because it was him, and he didn’t have a particularly handsome face. It may have been in part because he generally wasn’t a particularly nice person. It may also have been because Molly knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t in the habit of smiling. Smiling over baked goods, with Molly and Sirius in the room, was simply not in his nature.

He reached out a hand to pick one up. Molly made no effort to resist. She had, after all, written a cheerful note covered in little hearts inviting the entire Order to help themselves. Slowly, his eyes fixed on Sirius’s, he brought it to his mouth and bit down unnecessarily hard on the dog’s nose. He chewed with an aggression that wasn’t strictly speaking required, as Molly had already tried one and knew they were relatively soft.

Sirius watched him as he slowly but surely chomped on the dog’s face, a look on his face that Molly didn’t think to be the usual kind of facial expression of one enjoying a nice baked item. It was more the sort of sadistic expression Molly would have associated more closely with torture.

“…I hope you aren’t imagining that’s me…” Sirius muttered eventually, looking faintly disconcerted. The entire scenario of cheering Sirius up with dog shaped sweet bread was not going anything like the way Molly had planned, but at least it wasn’t going quite as bad as her worst case scenario that had popped into her mind when Severus swept into the room like a malevolent curse.

“Of course not,” Severus said calmly, in a tone that suggested otherwise, “Why would I be doing something so… childish…”

He took another bite, and watched as the chocolate sauce inside was revealed, dark and viscous against the soft bread.

“Ooh, look at the blood oozing out of the poor little dog’s face…” he murmured in a slightly mocking manner, which Sirius definitely heard, judging by the slight sound of indrawn breath. With a final smirk, he spun on his heel and left in a flurry of black robes, leaving Sirius fuming in his wake. Molly might have been offended at the way he completely ignored her and gave no thanks whatsoever to her for either her baking or her generosity, but in many ways she was quite glad to have been left out of the proceedings so entirely.

“Dog bread…?” Molly offered weakly, hoping against all the odds that Sirius might still enjoy eating them now that an entirely more unpleasant interpretation of her good intentions had been demonstrated.


End file.
